Festive Season - Madikwe Hills

See what has been happening at Madikwe over the festive season…

The summer solstices have come and gone and from now on the days will get progressively shorter. We all here at Madikwe Hills hope everybody had a Merry Christmas and could enjoy the day to the fullest with family and friends. We are now busy as ever here at the lodge and luckily the animals are just as active. We have been experiencing very hot conditions here in Madikwe for the last few weeks. Temperatures have been hovering around 35?C to 40?C and even peeked at 42?C the other day on game drive.

This hot weather can mean only one thing and that is that most of the animals will look for ways to keep themselves cool. Who better to ask than the elephants? One afternoon we arrived at a quarry not far from the lodge where rainwater has collected during the past rain. When we got there we were greeted by an amazing sight. A whole herd of elephants were playing in the water like a bunch of seven year olds and the fun and joyous expressions on their faces told the whole story. They were diving in the water, splashing themselves and even chased each other around. It looked very inviting and we were a little tempted to join them, since we were sitting outside in the scorching sun looking upon this spectacle of water sports.

It is a most beautiful time of year and the plains are absolutely covered with bright yellow flowers making everything seem like a fairytale. The lions tend to hang out in this area more often now since the arrival of all the youngsters on the plains. Everywhere you look there are baby wildebeest, impala, springbuck, and zebra running around and jumping out of pure joy of being alive. They have to be careful though since a hungry lion is never too far off and just waiting for someone to make a mistake. Up until now we are still waiting for some decent rains and we hope and pray that it won?t be too long before we can get a little relief.

Until next time